Joe, the Parrot Is Dead!

Charles J Hynes after he lost reelectionphoto by Arthur DeGaeta in The Brooklyn Paper

Charles (Joe) Hynes did it again. For the second time in four weeks he broke his promise to cooperate with Ken Thompson in the transition. Instead he is going to campaign for reelection as Brooklyn District Attorney on the Republican and Conservative party lines on the ballot.

He cannot win now that Kenneth Thompson has the Democratic nomination. Chicago Cubs fans have more grounds for optimism. I am not even interested in his deluded calculations or self-interested motives. I just want to run the Monty Python, dead-parrot skit.

There is a division of sentiment inside the Office of Kings County District Attorney (KCDA). Most people are just annoyed. They feel Hynes is practically dead. Why can’t he do the decent thing and drag himself off and just finish dying? But some folks have watched too many vampire movies. They won’t rest easy until they see the voters pounding the stake in November. A few folks who have lousy job prospects feel like gamblers with free chips. Sure the house will probably win, but they have nothing to lose, and if they win, they get to keep their jobs. So they are smugly posturing to conceal their desperate bet, as if they were playing poker where appearances matter, rather than the lottery.

The only certain thing is that this is not a climate conducive to focusing on a transition, especially since Hynes is no longer honoring his promise to cooperate with the Thompson transition team and provide them office space.

Things are so bad for Hynes that his campaign spokesman in the primary, George Arzt, is now working for Thompson. Instead, Jerry Schmetterer is taking leave from KCDA to be the Hynes campaign spokesman. This is an act of desperation. Schmetterer has spent at least five years refusing to talk to many reporters. He is not going to be effective at getting good press coverage for Hynes. He does have one advantage. He knows where the bodies are buried in KCDA so he will know which questions to duck.

Facts are facts and he will depart. I would like to have been able to say, “Nothing became him like his departure.” But there will be nothing becoming about it. At best it will trigger a Downfall parody clip.

Joe, give it up. The parrot is dead!

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9 thoughts on “Joe, the Parrot Is Dead!”

Big deal, the Boss and his Goon Squad will do their Zombie Walk all the way to the polls on November 5th. The real question is which “yard” they’ll be walking in when the dust settles. They could have left peacefully and stood a chance of being forgotten. But no, the Boss and his Goon Squad know only one way. So, come January, no more secrets.

This is an awkward place for you Lopin. I admit that it is for me as well. I’ve thought about this possibility a lot. All the same, I would be remiss not to ask you: Are you more confident that Ken Thompson will prosecute that type that tortured you when you were a little boy?

At no point have I ever said that prosecution for anything that happened to me personally is at the core of my motivation any more than as a Jew I am big on calling my efforts a crusade. Check your assumptions before commenting.

The Republican party’s action here is embarrassing. There is nothing remotely republican about this life long democrat, that is having trouble accepting defeat!

It’s their desperate attempts at relevance, even at the expense of party values that makes them a laughingstock!! Consider this; twelve years after America’s mayor (Guiliani) leaves office, the republican candidate for mayor is trailing by 50 points!?!? They come across to voters as political horse traders.

Aside from coming across as a party without any positions, I believe there is a serious imaging problem here. To the average guy, the picture looks something like this….
“There are two democrats duking it out to be the Brooklyn DA; the republican party is siding with the white old Democrat over the young black Democrat?!?” They are playing into the stereotype that the republican party is white old men!!

Since Hynes has no chance and they have nothing to gain politically, they should be worrying about their long term image. I would think.

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